#svnsbaks

“Blake! Get your partner-killing ass over here,” he bellowed. Jaha gave him a look and shuffled away. Bellamy sneered at Kane, mostly out of habit, but did as he was bid.

The tall older man glowered at him as he approached. Marcus Kane was an excellent officer and a good teacher, but his training methods were relentless and he didn’t sit for argument. Bellamy knew he was in for a good talking too. He’d “killed” Griffin at least half a dozen times already during this team exercise with Miller and Jaha. In fact, the four of them were the only team not to have passed yet. There was no doubt that it was getting on Kane’s nerves.

Standing beside Kane, Griffin was shaking sand out of that blonde lion’s mane of hers, glaring at Bellamy the whole time. He glared back. If he wasn’t so angry at her and himself, he would have admired the way her khaki pants and sky blue shirt clung to her curves. He wasn’t wasting time appreciating her assets, though, as he was annoyed beyond measure that she had once again refused to follow his direction, instead choosing to go off on her own and get herself killed.

“How do you like the taste of raspberry jelly, Griffin?” he asked as he came to a stop in front of Kane. “You should just admit you have an addiction. I could buy you a jar and save us all this trouble.”

“Actually, I hate it, Blake,” Griffin snarled back. “I wish you would stop spreading it all over me every training.”

Bellamy leered. “Only in your fantasies, Griffin.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but Kane stepped between them.

“That’s enough, the both of you!” he growled. Nostrils flared, his dark eyes blazed in his face.

“You two continuously sabotage your team’s efforts with your refusals to work together,” he began, but Griffin interrupted him.

“But Marcus, I specifically indicated that we should approach the subject with caution from the left as the—”

“—which was unnecessary, Griffin, because I’d already determined that the best course of actions was to head the subject off from the right—”

“See, that proves it!” Griffin stabbed Bellamy right in the chest with an accusing, sticky finger. “It was your fault that the trash can fell over on me and alerted the subject to my pre—”

“ENOUGH!” Kane yelled. Dust fell from the tops of the cardboard skyscrapers surrounding them. Even the fake dead rats seemed to cower when faced with Kane’s Wrath.

I’ll bet he’s submissive in bed, Bellamy thought.

“You two have been getting in each other’s way since Day One!” Kane said. He began to pace. “You haven’t once tried to compromise on an idea for the good of the team, and as a result, your group is consistently in last place during training!” He pointed at Bellamy. “I don’t care how many suspects you’ve apprehended in your career,” he snapped, ignoring Bellamy’s wince. “You aren’t working alone now. Trust is necessary! One false move and you—or a teammate—” He gestured with his thumb in Griffin’s direction. “—are dead!”

Griffin was smirking, which annoyed Bellamy to no end, but the smirk vanished when Kane rounded on her. “And you, Clarke!” He wagged his finger at her. “You, I expected to be better at working with a teammate. You and Reyes were the best team in the field. And I understand that it’s difficult replacing a partner, but when you were paired with Green you two managed to work perfectly fine and yet with Blake—” He swept his hand around, indicating the entire tomb simulation. “—you still haven’t gotten past the first section of the training city without being killed!”

He shook his head. “How can you two be so bad at teamwork? I know you are capable of working with others. Jaha and Miller don’t have this problem with each other, and you two do fine when you are paired with either one of them.”

He held up a hand, cutting off any protest Griffin might have made. “I don’t want to hear any excuses, Clarke,” he said, exhaustion evident in his voice. “I’ve had it. I don’t care how good you are individually or with other teammates. Fieldwork in real life doesn’t allow for do-overs. You have got to be able to work together. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You two obviously have some things to work out between you. Hit the showers, Griffin. You too, Blake. When you’re cleaned up, come see me in my office. You both have one last chance to pass the teamwork test or you are both out of this program. I value Jaha and Miller too much to saddle them with you two idiots.” With that, Marcus Kane glared at the two of them, turned on his heel, and left.

Bellamy couldn’t help himself. Despite the pit in his stomach that had formed at the words “one last chance”, he wiggled his eyebrows at Griffin.

“Very mature, Blake,” she hissed. “Why do you keep ignoring my suggestions during these trainings? I do know what I’m doing!”

“So do I, Griffin! Would it kill you to listen to my ideas once in a while?”

Griffin snorted. “Apparently, yes!” She gestured at her jam-covered clothing.

Bellamy stepped forward, glaring down at her. “You got yourself into that situation, Griffin, because once again, you didn’t listen to me.”

Bellamy noticed that Griffin’s gaze kept dropping from his eyes to his lips as he spoke. She licked her own lips in an unconscious gesture. Curious. Was she interested in him?

He gave her a knowing smile. She blushed, stuck her very pink tongue out at him, and stomped off, taking her raspberry jam-encrusted self away to the showers. Bellamy followed her, watching her ass sway as she marched ahead of him and trying unsuccessfully to drive the image of a naked Griffin under a spray of hot water out of his mind.

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Everything had been going pretty well until they’d actually arrived at the campsite.

Kane hadn’t told them what they’d be doing. He’d simply handed them a map, two large backpacks, and two sleeping bags. “You’ll find your instructions at the site,” he’d said, just before the car taking them to the location pulled away.

They’d been dropped off in the middle of a clearing in an unfamiliar forest. The sun had set about an hour before and the air was chilly. Bellamy searched around inside the packs, finding two winter coats and a bundle of canvas and stakes. A piece of paper inside fell to the mossy ground. Griffin snatched it up before Bellamy could grab it.

The note contained a short set of instructions from Kane. This forest, he’d written, was hiding a safe house where a kidnap victim was located. Their orders were simple: pitch the tent, locate the safe house, and “rescue” the kidnap victim. Then they just had to survive until morning without freezing to death.

They were to do it all of this as a team.

The terse note also told them that Kane had placed hidden cameras in the area. He would know if they didn’t work together to do the task. They wouldn’t be able to leave the location without a guide and their ride wouldn’t return until the next morning. Basically, they were stuck here for the night. Bellamy stared at Clarke in disbelief after hearing the instructions.

“He must be joking,” he said. “Us, working together?”

“What’s the matter, Blake? Afraid?”

“No,” Bellamy retorted, “let’s just get the ten set up, it’s going to be cold soon.”

As if to emphasize his point, a bitter wind gusted through the trees. They both shivered, as they were only wearing their FBI issued light weight blue shirts and cargo pants. Donning one of the two coats, Bellamy wordlessly held the other one open for Griffin. He shook it at her when she eyed him suspiciously, but then the wind blew again and she quickly turned around and allowed him to help her put the coat on.

She murmured her thanks, and then grabbed the jumbled mass of canvas and tent poles and proceeded to actually attempt to assemble the thing.

He never would have pictured her as the camping type.

At first, he simply watched her, standing guard over their two sleeping bags. He enjoyed watching her bend and flex while she tried to construct their sleeping quarters, and he allowed himself a short fantasy about canoodling with her inside the small tent. He grunted, and shook the thoughts from his head.

When he offered to help, she flashed him a genuine smile, surprising him with its warmth. Then she put him to work, directing him to put Pole A into Slot B, which he immediately illustrated with lewd jokes. She told him repeatedly to shut up, but he couldn’t help noticing her cheeks heat pink with blushes and sideways glances. Griffin was flirting with him! That sudden knowledge was almost as effective as if a heater had just been plugged in next to them.

Now, they were almost finished, except for one stray rod of metal.

“Here! Look.” Griffin triumphantly brandished the manual at him. “That piece of tent pole is used as a brace at the front of the tent to keep the ‘threshold’ secure.”

Bellamy crawled to the front of the tiny tent, squinted in the dark, and then shoved the rod into the empty slot he finally located in the canvas at the bottom of the entry flap. It fit. Bellamy settled on his knees, feeling triumphant.

“Looks like we’ve passed the first test at least,” noted Bellamy. He shoved the two sleeping bags in and crawled in after them.

“What are you doing, Blake?” Griffin asked. “We can’t go to sleep yet. We still have to find our kidnap victim.

"Yes,” Bellamy drawled, unrolling the bags and spreading them out. “But trust me, Griffin. It’s better to get this done first. Don’t you think we’ll be tired and want to just pass out when we get back here?” He sat back on his haunches to survey his work. The bags didn’t really fit. They overlapped down one long edge. He frowned but then noticed that the two sleeping bags could actually be zipped together, creating one big sleeping bag for two people to share.

One could only hope.

“Hmm. It looks pretty crowded,” Griffin said just over his shoulder, making him jump. She’d stuck her head in through the tent flap to check his progress.

He turned his head to look at her. Their faces were so close together his cheek brushed against hers.

Soft, he thought.

“Yea well,” he stuttered, clearing his throat. “Conservation of body heat and all that.”

Griffin withdrew, and Bellamy crawled backwards out of the tent. He made sure to flex the muscles in his ass as he stood and was rewarded with the sound of a feminine gasp. He smirked to himself. When he turned around, Griffin’s eyes snapped upward, guiltily, to his face. She was definitely pink in the cheeks. He grinned.

“Well! That’s done,” she said brusquely, rubbing her hands together and blowing on them. “Thank you, Blake. So. That just leaves rescuing our kidnap victim.” She looked up. There was no moonlight. Only stars could be seen peeking through the treetops.

“That’s inconvenient. No moonlight to help us find a path. We’ll have to be extremely careful.”

“I’m sure that was no accident, Griffin. Kane’s intimately acquainted with the need for stealth and caution,” Bellamy drawled.

“That’s a horrible thing to say, Blake!”

He shrugged. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Only because he was shot while on a mission because his partner was too loud in the field, chasing after a suspect to get to his baby sister—”

“I had no idea Octavia was the kidnap and the Bureau never would have let me on the case if they had!” Bellamy said, forcing himself to remain calm. “And not that it’s any of your business, but I had a heart-to-heart talk with Kane months ago, during my interview for this team. I apologized to him for my role in his shooting, he accepted my apology, and then we spent the rest of the time discussing Octavia. .”

She glared at him. He glared back. Then she said, in a quiet voice, “You did?”

He nodded, his arms folded. “Yes. I did. If he doesn’t blame me for it, why should you?”

She bit her lip. “I'm…sorry, Blake.”

“Thanks, Griffin.” He gave her a small smile. “To be perfectly honest, I think it was my bad attitude that got me the job in the first place.”

She stared at him for a moment before releasing a surprised burst of laughter. Bellamy chuckled, too. It was the first time they’d ever shared a laugh. It felt good.

Griffin gradually stopped laughing, but she was still smiling. “All right, Blake. Let’s go find our victim and pass this test.”

“There’s just one small snag, Griffin. Neither of us knows what our victim looks like”

She shook her head. “You’re right.” She held up a sealed envelope. “At least not yet.”

“Where did that come from?”

“It was in the pocket of this coat,” she said, smugly. “It’s a dossier.”

“That was convenient, wasn’t it,” Bellamy said.

He reached for the envelope but Griffin pulled it out of his reach. He settled for looking over her shoulder as she flipped through the packet. She stopped on a page towards the middle. “Here it is,” she said, poking the picture. “That’s what the cabin looks like, and it says that out kidnap victim is…a dummy? Well that will make things a bit easier.” She closed the book and headed for the trees. “Let’s go, then.”

Bellamy picked up the map. “Forgetting something, Griffin?” He smirked.

Griffin rolled her eyes. “Of course not, Blake,” she said. “I was trusting that you would bring it along.” She winked and headed into the forest.

With a grin slowly spreading across his face, Bellamy followed her.

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Almost two hours later, they found themselves staring over the edge of a deep ravine.

“Bellamy. Look how far down it is!” Her voice shook. She grabbed his hand, hard. Her own hand was cold and sweating.

Bellamy looked at Griffin in surprise, startled by her use of his first name. She looked miserable. He’d always scoffed at her dislike of airplanes, thinking it was just a fear of not being in control Seeing her this way now, he realized there was obviously a deeply-seated fear of heights.

He sighed. The cabin sat at the very bottom of the ravine. It was about thirty feet deep, and the walls were almost vertical, with very few discernible handholds. There was a dead tree wedged between the walls about halfway down. How were they to get to the cabin? There was no rope. There were no vines, this being a forest and not a jungle. All they had were… themselves. A hyperventilating, frightened young woman and a half-frozen young man. As he listened to Griffin’s panicky breathing, Bellamy began to form a plan.

“Griffin,” he said. “I know how we are going to do this. Follow my lead.”

Bellamy dropped onto his stomach, swung his legs out over the fallen tree in the ravine, and began to lower himself down to its trunk. There were a few handholds here and there, in the form of tree roots and saplings mainly, and he was able to reach the tree itself fairly quickly. He picked his way around the broken branches carefully so he could look down at the ravine floor. He gauged the distance—the cabin was about ten feet below them.

He smiled and looked up at Griffin. “Come on down. What are you waiting for?”

Griffin’s pale little face looked over the edge at him. He could barely make out her features. “But… but how will we get back up, Bellamy?”

“There are plenty of handholds. We’ll be able to get back up, don’t worry. Come on. I’m right here. I won’t let you fall. I have a plan.” He held his hands up to her. When she still hesitated, he taunted, “Well? Which is it, Griffin? Are you a scaredy cat?”

That did it. He couldn’t see her well, but he could imagine the stubborn set to her jaw. She got down on her belly and carefully edged her bum out over the lip of the ravine, right above his head. She began to pick her way down. He could just make out her outline in the dark, and he took a firm hold of her ankles as soon as they were within reach. He helped her down the rest of the way, his hands grasping her knees, hips, and then waist, until finally she was in his arms, feet firmly planted on the great tree trunk. “You made it, Griffin. Nice.” She closed her eyes, gasping, and clung to him. He rubbed her back soothingly. He could get used to this.

When her breathing had slowed slightly, he said, “Are you ready? It’s time for the next step.”

“What is the next step?” Griffin’s voice was soft but shrill. “We’re still about ten feet up, Bellamy. We can’t reach the ground from here!”

“Not yet we can’t. But we will.”

He sat down on the trunk. He’d found a long, sturdy branch still attached to the tree, just thick enough to hold his weight, and maybe a little more. It was perfect for what he had in mind. He slid out onto it slowly, testing it. It held his weight with no trouble. He wrapped his legs around it securely.

“Come here, Griffin,” he said, holding out a hand to her. “I’ll lower you down. Then you’ll be able to reach the ground. You should be able to drop down, get to the cabin, grab the victim, and hand her up to me. I’ll pull you back up as soon as we’ve got her secured.”

“What? How… No!”

Bellamy showed her. He flipped himself over so he was upside down on the branch, his legs still holding on securely. “See? I used to do this all the time playing with O on the monkey bars.” He righted himself. “You’ve seen my legs, Griffin. You know I can hold on. Trust me,” he added, holding his hand out to her once more.

Her gaze met his. He could see her eyes, barely, in this dark ravine. They were shining with starlight. He waited, patiently. If she didn’t find her bravery, they weren’t going to be able to do this, and they’d fail the test.

“If I don’t do this, we’ll fail, won’t we?” she muttered. Bellamy said nothing. It was rather obvious. Another minute passed, and then he heard her mutter “what the hell” under her breath before she reached to take his hand. He smiled. Guiding her out onto the branch, he coaxed her to sit facing him. Once she was in position, he wrapped his arms around her.

“Ready?” he asked, and before she could change her mind, he flipped both of them over to hang upside down beneath the branch.

Clarke shrieked. She tried to grab him but her arms were pressed tight against her sides. He’d been ready for this reaction, though, and he had pulled her securely against his chest as they’d flipped. Now, his thighs were straining a bit with the effort of holding them both, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Now, I’ll lower you down, slowly,” he whispered in her ear.

She whimpered and shivered, but nodded. “Don't… please don’t drop me, Bellamy.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “You can trust me, Clarke. I’ll never let go.”

With that, Bellamy Blake cautiously lowered Clarke Griffin down toward the forest floor. By holding her wrists, he was able to get her close enough to the ground that she could drop down without injury. He concentrated on his breathing and his grip and tried not to notice the way both her coat and her shirt slid to expose her creamy white stomach and back.

His heart filled with admiration for her. She was impressive. Despite her fear, she worked quickly and efficiently, dropping down to the ground and heading off at a quick clip towards the cabin. Bellamy right himself, and watched as the moonlight followed her blonde head across the ravine. She cautiously opened the door to the cabin and peeked her head in, training weapon at the ready. In very little time, Griffin had retrieved the kidnapping victim and carried her back with her across the ravine. They’d done it!

“I’m done!” she called, after she handed the dummy up to him. “Pull me up now, Bellamy.”

Thank God for all those ab workouts! Quickly, he had Griffin back in his arms and then up onto the tree trunk. He pulled himself up next to her. She threw her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Bellamy dropped and arm over her shoulder and hugged her to him. “You did great,” he murmured in her ear. He felt her smile against his neck.

He grabbed the dummy and tossed it over his should in a fireman’s carry, and together they made their way back up the side of the ravine. Using the silvery moonlight, they made their way back to the campsite.

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"Well,“ Griffin murmured. She stirred the fire with a stick, sending sparks into the air. Bellamy had found matches in an inside pocket of his coat. "We rescued the victim.”

Bellamy nodded. "We did, indeed,” he said. “Despite great personal risk.” He nudged the dummy with his foot. Griffin reached over and placed it carefully beside the tent. “Thank you for not dropping me.”

Bellamy smiled. “I told you I wouldn’t.”

She smiled back. “Yes, you did. And you should know that, even though I was scared the entire time, not once did I ever think you’d let go. Not for one second.”

Her eyes were shining when he looked at her. Her lips were slightly parted and the light of the fire made her hair glow like burnished gold. She looked like a woodland fairy. The mystical air about her was emphasized when she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was long, slow, and sizzling with promise. Bellamy buried his hands in her hair, holding her to him, and explored her mouth with his.

To his (by now, admittedly slight) surprise, Griffin climbed into his lap and began to unbutton his shirt beneath his unzipped coat. He let her. He sucked in his breath as she slid her hands over his chest. “Well, of course I would never have let you fall to your death, Clarke,” he said. “We needed to pass the training.”

Griffin laughed. He liked her laugh. She caressed his chest and his shoulders, causing him to groan. He liked her hands, too.

“I think we definitely passed,” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss her again. She stopped him with one finger over his lips. When he raised a questioning eyebrow, she gave him a sly smile, leaned over, and opened the tent flap behind them.

“Would you like to carry this on inside?” she asked.